The findings are based around 8 billion impressions and almost 8 million clicks, and include worldwide bigger picture details and country-specific insights.

Seeing as Taboola (and the many other content/adtech companies which produce this type of report) talk up their ability to “target” customers, the most relevant and usable finding are the specifics – although it is still interesting to put these specifics into a wider context.

Picture this

The section on how users respond to imagery is timely, as it comes around the same time that TripAdvisor announced a new feature for primary property photos, which uses machine learning to auto select high-performing images for accommodation listings.

On a global scale, Taboola found that pictures which were taken from a distance got a 62% higher click-through rate (CTR) than those which featured close-ups. Pictures got a 19% higher CTR than graphics; images with men got a higher 2% CTR than pictures with women.

But the country breakdown reveals some interesting deviations from the global norm. Brits are big fans of the long-shot, with content featuring this type of image getting a 265% higher CTR than a close-up. Canadians have a preference for graphics over imagery, reflected in a 169% higher CTR ; in Japan, pictures with women get a 100% higher CTR than pictures with men.

Keywords

Search is still a massive part of the travel inspiration process for many travellers around the globe, which is why keyword analysis findings are always interesting. And while not exactly giving away the recipe for the secret sauce, the Taboola report gets quite granular about which keywords in headlines represent an opportunity. Opportunity is defined as “low in supply and high in demand.”

The list is a bit random – in the US there is an opportunity around using “load” in headlines, a bigger challenge incorporating that into a click-friendly headline than Canada where “you” is the biggest opportunity.

Any supplier of non-traditional accommodation to the Australian market will be interested to learn that “cottages” is the biggest opportunity; in the UK, “pool” is there for the taking while Spaniards are responsive to content which includes “secret” in the headline.

Big country

The gap between demand and supply for travel content is the most pronounced in India, Israel and France where brands using a content strategy have less competition – at least at the time that that the report was produced. France is a mature travel market so the fact that there isn’t a lot of content is a surprise. Recent research shows that 69% of people in a country with a population of around 65 million plan to take a break this summer.

India meanwhile is an emerging market with a huge population. In the broadest sense, many Indians are in a position to travel for the first time, which would explain the desire for travel content. The other side of the coin is that the Indian market is hyper-competitive, and the major OTAs and airlines are in a land-grab for customers and might be pursuing more established and expensive channels – such as discounts – to acquire customers.